The Situation: Wolves in Wolves' Clothing

The Situation on Monday introduced Lawfare’s new narrative podcast series, which has made it to number 67 on the Apple Podcasts chart in news.

Which is to say that it is only 60 places behind the podcast of the FBI’s new deputy director, Dan Bongino—which is currently in seventh place. 

I confess that I have a certain envy of Bongino today, and it’s not just because Escalation still has a lot of climbing to do before it overtakes the Dan Bongino Show in the rankings. It’s also because I think that among podcasters qualified for senior FBI positions, I actually should be higher on the list than he is. Sure, sure, Bongino was a Secret Service agent, and a New York cop, and I have never worked in law enforcement at all. And I know that being a podcaster isn’t really a qualification at all to run complex investigations and manage a 35,000 person agency.

But hey, the day-in-day-out content of the Lawfare Podcast is far more germane on average to the FBI’s day-to-day business than is the average episode of the Dan Bongino Show (unless, that is, you consider MAGA politicking to be rightfully the FBI’s business—which Donald Trump clearly does). And while both Bongino and I are underqualified for the position in the formal sense of, you know, ever having run a major law enforcement agency or component before, I at least know that I’m wildly unqualified for the job.

By contrast, I fear that neither the soon-to-be-former podcaster nor his soon-to-be-boss, Kash Patel, has the faintest idea that they are both cosplaying as leaders of the world’s preeminent investigative agency.

Think I’m exaggerating about the cosplaying bit? Read today’s Wall Street Journal, which reports—and I swear that I’m not making this up—that Patel announced in his first meeting with the field offices that he “was planning to . . . arrange a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the UFC cage-fighting league run by a close friend of President Trump’s.”

They don’t even know they’re cosplaying. It’s a little bit of a problem.

Indeed, it’s bad enough to have at the helm of the Bureau a man like Patel, who is temperamentally unfit for the job, political to his core, and fanatically devoted to the interests of his patron—and a bit of a grifter to boot. Surround a guy like that with professionals who are steeped in the culture of the organization and committed to not letting it be politicized, and the problem may—or may not—be containable. Maybe he goes native. Maybe he gets managed by the organization. Maybe he gets bored because there just isn’t that much opportunity for political mischief with everyone committed to following the rules.

But put a man under Patel who is similarly out of his depth and similarly political, and make this man responsible for a great deal of the day-to-day management decisions of the agency and things can get out of hand pretty fast. 

Think I’m exaggerating about this? The FBI traditionally has only one political appointee—the director. But the same Wall Street Journal article reports that: “Soon after arriving, Patel cleared out all civil-service staff in the leadership suites and replaced them with political associates; ordered 1,500 employees relocated out of Washington without money in place to pay for the move; and broke a promise he made to agents to appoint a deputy from their ranks.”

So it won’t be just Patel and Bongino, see? There will be a whole cadre of political appointees in the front office—ones without expertise in the basic blocking and tackling of running an FBI, much less the highly refined expertises associated with complex investigations. This is a radical change. It is not just politicizing what had been professional. It is replacing professional expertise with political talkers who don’t actually know anything.

Again, I’m really not exaggerating. Just listen to an episode of the Dan Bongino Show. Take your pick as to which one. Ask yourself whether anything in it reflects any specialized skill associated with running a law enforcement agency, let alone one with highly specialized expertise in matters like foreign counterintelligence, art theft, tracking money, and counterterrorism. Ask yourself whether you are as qualified as Bongino to handle day-to-day operations at the FBI. You probably are.

I had a run-in with Bongino once—or maybe more than once. It was on Twitter, back when it was Twitter, and the evidence of it has all been purged. My tweets were purged when my account was suspended. His tweets have been deleted (I don’t know when or why). So I can’t reconstruct the exchange with any confidence. I will say, however, that it was more of the type one would have with Sean Hannity or Jim Jordan than with anyone who has ever previously served as deputy FBI director. 

What is the cost of having an FBI front office composed of people who are deeply political, totally lacking in relevant experience and who seem to have no sense that they are unready for their roles and very interested in the most theatrical combat aspects of FBI life—for which they want to partner with the UFC?

There will be costs. That’s for sure. There will be costs to integrity, as the Bureau is directed towards certain things for political reasons and restrained from others for political reasons. These costs may or may not be visible, and their magnitude will depend on how flamboyantly the new leadership team flaunts the political theatricality.

There will also be costs to effectiveness. Because running the FBI actually requires some skill, and it involves supervising people with remarkably specialized skills—and that means understanding the difference between the UFC and real fights. It means understanding when shutting up is more valuable than yapping. And it means respecting the skills one does not have. It also means not denigrating the professionalism of people who have the option of retiring, or quitting, and it means not creating an atmosphere in which people fear for their careers for doing their jobs aggressively.

Think I’m exaggerating? Ask yourself this question: Imagine that two years from now investigations in Issue Area X become a priority for the administration, and imagine that this is totally legitimate. But imagine also that these investigations are controversial, opposed by a lot of Democrats? How are you going to get special agents to line up for this work, when they know there’s a 50-50 chance that Patel and Bongino will be out the door, and will be followed in office by partisan Democrats who might well retaliate against those who were too enthusiastic in their participation in the Area X investigations?

Again, these costs may be very visible, or they may be largely invisible. But they will be there. Aggregate a lot of people working a little bit less hard, retiring a little bit earlier or quitting a little bit sooner, and being a little less enthusiastic in encouraging others to sign up—and you have a less effective institution.

Which is also to say that there will be costs to morale. There already have been those, and they have been severe.

All of this is playing out at other agencies too, of course. Only today, a Justice Department spokesman quit, writing that: “It has been an honor to serve this department under multiple administrations led by both Republicans and Democrats, each of whom have previously treated career staff with respect and dignity. It is heartbreaking to see that basic decency come to an end.” Wrote Joshua Stueve, a long-serving communications specialist, in his resignation letter, “I cannot continue to serve in such a hostile and toxic work environment, one where leadership at the highest levels makes clear we are not welcome or valued, much less trusted to do our jobs.”

You can tell the same story about USAID, the State Department, public health agencies, and lots of other places.

But the FBI is different. It is the main federal agency that wields guns against Americans. It is the pointy edge of a spear that can be used to protect or can be used to oppress. At different times in its history, it has done both—sometimes concurrently. And it has been a bipartisan project of the last 50 years to refine its role to the protective function.

That project is at an end. And in that sense, Patel and Bongino are appropriate leaders. They are not hiding. They are not wolves in sheep’s clothing. And they are staffing the FBI’s leadership offices with wolves that are similarly undisguised.

The Situation continues tomorrow.